8/14/2009 @ 12:01AM

Obama: The New Reagan?

President Barack Obama has rightly been regarded as the liberal equivalent of Ronald Reagan, if not the second coming of Franklin Roosevelt. Like Reagan, the current president combines an attractive and compelling personality with superb communication skills to blunt the hard edges of his ideology and appeal to the broad spectrum of non-ideological voters who decide most elections (and who decided the 2008 election).

Reagan also proved that it is possible, within limits, to govern successfully as an ideological president. Obama himself acknowledged this during the campaign, commenting that “Ronald Reagan changed the trajectory of America … He put us on a fundamentally different path because the country was ready for it.” For all of his talent, however, Obama has not grasped the fine points of how Reagan succeeded in advancing his agenda.

There was a lot of heavy breathing when Obama reached the 100-day mark in his presidency back in April, at which point he had signed into law a “stimulus” bill, which was a pure pork frenzy, and the Lily Ledbetter Act, which merely reversed a narrow Supreme Court decision on employment law. Hardly the stuff to make a new FDR legend. Yet Doris Kearns Goodwin wrote that “I don’t think we’ve ever seen anything like Obama since Roosevelt,” and Elaine Kamarck of Harvard said, “In a way, Obama’s 100 days is even more dramatic than Roosevelt’s.” Now, at the 200-day mark, Obama’s main-agenda item of health care reform, as well as cap-and-trade climate policy, show signs of being close to stalling out, and his job approval ratings are steadily eroding.

The contrast with Reagan is instructive. At the 200-day mark of Reagan’s presidency, he was repairing to his California ranch to sign into law his main objective–the 25% across-the-board income tax rate cut that was the centerpiece of “Reaganomics.” Even as the economy began a steep decline into serious recession in the fall of 1981, Reagan’s job approval ratings held up at around the 60% level.

More important, unlike Obama, whose party enjoys large majorities in both houses of Congress, Reagan had to get his program through a Democrat-controlled House of Representatives, whose leadership was relentlessly hostile. This was one of the keys to Reagan’s success, ironically enough; lacking a partisan majority, Reagan had to persuade a significant number of Democrats to back his agenda, making his program genuinely bipartisan. The large Democratic majorities in Congress today are arguably Obama’s curse, for they have relieved him of the necessity to achieve a bipartisan basis for his agenda.

Obama made one other mistake that Reagan avoided. Though it is true that Reagan concentrated on only one large item in his first-year agenda (the tax and budget cuts), while Obama is trying to “do too much,” the deeper problem is that Obama lost control of the details of his agenda. He didn’t just lose control–he inexplicably gave it away. Starting with the stimulus in January and continuing with the cap and trade bill–and now the health care reform plan–Obama surrendered the details to Congress to work out. Reagan never did that. He may have bargained with individual members of Congress, but he always made sure Congress faced an up-or-down vote on his plan, and he attacked alternative bills that came out of the congressional sausage factory and favor machine.

Perhaps Obama may have thought that it was necessary to allow Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, Barney Frank and other Democrats–restless after eight years of President George W. Bush–room to run wild. But this illuminates another key difference between Reagan and Obama–an important element in the former president’s statecraft that nearly everyone has overlooked.

Throughout his presidency, Reagan had to resist strong pressure from his own party to change course. One of the startling aspects of Reagan’s personal diary is how critical he was of congressional Republicans. He complained about his own party as often as he did Democrats and the media, and we know from various sources that he often had vigorous arguments in the Oval Office with other members of the GOP. Reagan understood that short-term concerns–chiefly reelection and servicing interest groups–dominate the minds of members of Congress. So far there is no evidence that Obama has stood up to his own party on the Hill over anything; to the contrary, Obama is so concerned about not repeating Jimmy Carter’s bad relations with Hill Democrats that he is letting them lead him around by the nose. This is a formula for a mediocre presidency.

Placed next to Reagan, Obama presents a picture of a politician with formidable gifts and vision, but weak and indecisive leadership. Recall, too, Reagan’s own 200-day mark: He had fired the striking air traffic controllers and would shortly order the Navy to shoot back at Libyan warplanes in the Mediterranean, showing he would not be rolled at home or abroad. Obama, in contrast, relentlessly apologizes to the world for America’s past sins, acquiesces in the ransom of American captives in North Korea, and remains strangely silent about our important ongoing military campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Obama may yet get lucky; the economy may turn, events overseas may stay relatively calm, and Congress may reach a compromise on health care reform that would allow him a splashy signing ceremony on the White House lawn. If so, he may then coast to a second term in 2012. But a strong president doesn’t depend on luck and the reasonableness of Congress. He makes–like Reagan–his own luck.